The invention herein pertains to a nonwoven textile and a method of making it, and more particularly pertains to a nonwoven textile panel having a face side, which is predominently one type of fiber, and which is capable of being formed under conditions of heat and pressure to retain a desired shape, one major application of which is carpeting.
Many situations arise where it would be desirable to cover an irregular surface with a carpeting material. A common example of this is to cover the trunk of a car with a carpeting material. In order to work well, such a carpeting material must be capable of taking on irregular, uneven shapes. It must have good hand feel, it must look good, and it must be resistant to the effects of water and soil.
The earliest attempts at meeting these needs involved taking ordinary carpeting, much like what is found on the floors of an average home, and attempting to cut the carpet so as to fit the irregular and uneven lining of a car's trunk. The carpeting would have to be glued down or tied down by means of mechanical fasteners. This had several disadvantages. Firstly, it is expensive and time consuming to individually cut and shape the carpeting to fit the desired area. With time, the adhesive or the fasteners would come loose, and the carpeting would separate from the trunk liner, and curl up at its edges and corners in an unsightly way. Furthermore, the carpeting often was not particularly resistant to the effect of water and heavy soil and would take on an unpleasant soiled and weathered look.
The introduction of synthetic fibers to the carpeting industry meant that carpeting would become more resistant to weathering, fading, and mildewing. However, the problem of fitting carpeting into irregular spaces still existed. Then, ways were developed of using synthetic fibers, whic hwould partially melt when heated up to a certain temperature, and which would then bond to each other when they were cooled. This meant that a carpet-like material could be made out of nonwoven fibers. Carpet-like material made of nonwoven fibers was easier to shape and contour around irregular and uneven surfaces. Furthermore, while the fibers were still warm, a piece of the material could be molded under conditions of pressure and heat to take on the general outline of the area to be carpeted. (This process is known as thermoforming.) Thus, there now exists a way to mold car trunk carpeting quickly and efficiently.
The problem then arose of how to manufacture such carpeting in an efficient and economical way before the carpeting was cut and molded to a given shape. One common approach was to make a soft bulky assembly of fibers, or batt, and then to attach the batt to carpeting that had been loomed on a conventional carpet loom. The loomed carpet would be attached to the batt by a needle loom. A needle loom works by pushing a needle downwards into a bulk of fibers. The needle has barbs on it, but the barbs face downward instead of upwards. In a reverse-fishhook principle, the barbs that are being pushed in a downward direction tend to catch fibers and pull them downwards so as to thoroughly entangle and intermix the fibers among each other. This results in a batt that has been compressed, and is less likely to fray. The process of running such fibers through the needle loom is commonly known as needle-punching, or simply, needling. This is discussed in more detail in U.S. Pat. No. 4,424,250, (Adams and Middleton) the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Taking development one step further, it was discovered that the step of attaching a separately loomed carpet to the batt could be eliminated if the batt where needle-punched in such a way as to give it a fuzzy surface to make it look and feel like loomed carpeting. The problem with this was that the end product would be glossy or shiny after having been molded. Often, there were regions on the surface where fibers had visibly fused together, thus giving the product a less pleasing appearance. Also, the end product would not always be stiff enough to sufficiently cover vertical surfaces. Furthermore, such a carpet could not always be shaped closely enough to follow particularly sharp contours. Thus, there was a need for a way of making a nonwoven fiber carpeting that had desirable carpet-like qualities, good hand-feel, absence of fused, glossy, or shiny surface areas, which could be shaped around particularly sharp contours, and which had enough stiffness to cover vertical surfaces without having to be affixed onto such a surface.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a nonwoven, needle-punched carpeting, (among other classes of textile materials) which will not show glossy, shiny, or fused regions on the surface after the carpeting has been subjected to heat during the molding process. It is another object of the present invention to provide a nonwoven, needle-punched carpeting, which will take on the shape of particularly sharp contours during the molding process, and which will be stiff enough to cover vertical, as well as horizontal surfaces without having to be mechanically fastened to vertical surfaces. It is yet another object of the present invention to produce a nonwoven, needle-punched carpet from a fibrous batt in one manufacturing step, which will be capable of being molded.
It is a feature of the present invention to be able to obtain a nonwoven, needle-punched carpeting (again, among other classes of textile materials) material, which can be formed into a relatively rigid textile panel from a loosely consolidated, nonwoven fibrous batt, which is comprised of different types of fibers that have been chosen so that the needle-punching process will tend to force one type of the fibers to the surface of the final product. It is another feature of the present invention to control the variables of neelde size, needle barb type, needle length, and/or depth of needling during the needle-punching process in order to preferentially push a desired fiber in a loosely consolidated nonwoven fibrous batt towards one side of the carpeting material. It is yet another feature of the present invention that a carpeting material emerges from the needle-punching process without having had to attach a separately loomed carpet to the fibrous backing. It is yet another feature of the present invention that the fibers chosen for the loosely consolidated nonwoven fibrous batt can vary not only as to their likelihood of being preferentially needled to one side of the final product, but also can be chosen so as to vary in their softening point temperatures during the thermoforming process.
Where it is desired to manufacture carpeting or a carpet-like material, it is an advantage of the present invention that the final product exhibits a pleasing, carpet-like appearance, which has good hand-feel. It is another advantage of the present invention that a carpeting material emerges from the needle-punching process without having to separately purchase and attach a separately loomed carpet to the fibrous backing material. For these reasons, and for other reasons that are explained below, the present invention solves a need in this area.